American Companies Increasingly Trade On Children's Fear Of Gun Violence

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A training program for active shooters includes this book to explain to children how to respond to an active shooter.Elizabeth MacBride

Every quarter since I started writing about the business of guns in January, I’ve written a post sharing what I’ve discovered as a middle-of-the-road American journalist and mother. In the past three months, I’ve dug deeper into the products that have grown out of our unique gun culture, which includes a lot of guns and a high level of gun violence.

I’ve encountered stories of children who used guns wisely and responsibly, on hunting trips and trips into the wilderness, and for competitive shooting. But I’ve also come across products that show a society increasingly willing to trade on the fear and excitement produced in children by gun violence.

1. A book called “I’m not scared, I’m prepared.” A couple of months ago, I reached out to a company called the ALICE Training Institute that provides schools with anti-shooter training to see if they’d talk to me about their business. Nobody responded. But the public school system where I live is providing ALICE training, so I learned a little bit more about it, and came across this book provided for elementary schools, to be read aloud to children.

It’s about teaching kids “Sheep, Shepherd, Wolf,” drills. The gist is that kids have a better chance of surviving if they take action if a shooter enters their room. They could run away, zig zag, down the hall or throw toys, versus cowering under their desks or huddling together.

Here’s a sample of the text:

“We must do what we can to INFORM the others, by telling them all that we know. Then look around and find a something to hold onto, something that’s easy to throw. A shoe from a cubby, a block of wood or maybe a TV remote, a paper-back book, a video game, or even a plastic goat.”

In a word, I find this horrifying. I know elementary school teachers and mothers who cried at the idea of it being read aloud to children (I was one of them). Story time is not supposed to scare children; it is supposed to reassure them that the world and the adults in it can be trusted.

The very idea that we’re focusing on the question of whether to tell little children to run zig zag, throw toys or huddle with their friends when faced with a huge rifle that can fire hundreds of bullets a minute means we are abdicating our real responsibility, which is to keep murderers, especially murderers with the capacity to kill many people, out of schools.

I don’t think this is solely a gun violence issue, either. Part of what’s going on is that we have lost track of how to care for children. ALICE training in schools is another sign of the strangeness that’s expressed in Amazon's Jeff Bezos saying that preschool kids are customers. I get where people who think that book is a good idea are coming from. I get where Bezos is coming from. With all due respect to their intentions, no.

2. Bulletproof backpacks. Fox News producers led a segment on bulletproof backpacks with the La Roux song, Bulletproof, which caused La Roux to protest. She told Billboard: “Using ‘Bulletproof,’ a song I wrote about relationships, for a piece like this is abhorrent. I have never, and would never approve my music to be used in this way.”

Bartiromo looked pretty uncomfortable, vaguely muttering: “Oh my goodness. It's incredible that this has come to this though, that we need bulletproof clothing,” and then rapidly changed the subject. “Some of these things are quite fashion-forward.”

3. PG-13 movies. Researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that PG-13 movies tend to have more incidents of violence – the rate of violence in them has doubled since 2005, when the rating began. Meanwhile, R-rated movies have fewer, more visceral instances.

Probably in part as a result of the PG-13 rating, movies increasingly show gun violence that is justified and where the consequences have been removed. That has in turn meant moviemakers included more of that kind of gun violence. “We’ve been in a feedback loop,” said Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Parents are comfortable with the idea of showing their children justified violence starting at about age 15. “We don’t know whether viewing movies with justified violence teaches children that guns are OK if being used in a justified manner,” said Romer.

But he did suggest that the movie industry has stepped over the line, calling movies OK for 13- and 14-year-olds that parents aren’t comfortable with them watching.

A business journalist for 20 years and a freelancer for more than 10 of that, I’ve written about tobacco farmers in Amish Country, immigrants in New York City and financiers all over the world. Right now, I'm writing about the business of guns. I've recently been named a Fe...